On January 31, 2020 Zero Hedge was Permanently Suspended From Twitter for ‘Harassment’.
Twitter accused ZeroHedge of “targeted harassment”
Twitter Restores Zero Hedge Account After Admitting Error
It took Twitter nearly 6 months to review the case, but on June 13, 2020 Twitter Restores Zero Hedge Account After Admitting Error.
“We made an error in our enforcement action in this case,” a spokesperson for Twitter said in an email. “Based on additional context from the account holder in appeal, we have reinstated the account. We have a dedicated appeals process for all account holders.”
Hopefully the “dedicated” appeals process does not take 6 months for everyone.
Welcome Back
Welcome Back @zerohedge
Twitter Restores Zero Hedge Account After Admitting Errorhttps://t.co/dOYSIfXQSF
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) June 13, 2020
The controversial @ZeroHedge has 727,000 followers.
ZeroHedge has those followers because he will post on anything and everything.
His posts frequently take two sides of the same issue because he takes a lot of guests posts.
For example, he may use a post of mine on deflation then hours later post a rant by someone calling for hyperinflation within a year.
The more controversial the subject, the more likely ZeroHedge is to discuss it.
Thought Police Don’t Control ZeroHedge
The thought police do not control ZeroHedge. And that is a good thing, whether or not you like his style.
Unfortunately, the thought police are running rampant nearly everywhere.
Trump and the Media Both Destroying Themselves
Yesterday, I commented Trump and the Media Both Destroying Themselves
My article contained excerpts from Matt Taibbi’s article The American Press Is Destroying Itself.
Taibbi blasted Trump as a “clown” but even more so the media which has “become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts.”
Taibbi gave instances in which editors or writers lost their jobs or nearly so at the Intercept, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Variety, the New York Times, and other places for seemingly innocuous headlines.
- Philadelphia Inquirer’s editor, Stan Wischowski, was forced out after approving a headline, “Buildings matter, too.”
- The editor of Variety, Claudia Eller, was placed on leave after calling a South Asian freelance writer “bitter” in a Twitter exchange about minority hiring at her company.
- Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted for green-lighting an anti-protest editorial by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton entitled, “Send in the troops.”
Intercept writer Lee Fang, whose investigative work led record fine to a conservative Super PAC nearly lost his job and was forced to apologize.
This is what Fang said:
I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?… Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of… It’s stuff just like that that I just want in the mix.
Taibbi commented:
A significant number of Fang’s co-workers, nearly all white, as well as reporters from other major news organizations like the New York Times and MSNBC and political activists (one former Elizabeth Warren staffer tweeted, “Get him!”), issued likes and messages of support for the notion that Fang was a racist. Though he had support within the organization, no one among his co-workers was willing to say anything in his defense publicly.
Screw the Intercept
If you click on an Intercept article you are likely to see this message asking for donations.
Protecting freedom of the press has never been more important. Thank you for being a member of The Intercept. Will you make an additional contribution to support our journalism?
I suggest, “screw the Intercept”, it is just another radical publication that is now part of the thought police problem.
The Medium
Earlier today, a reader sent a link to an excellent article on the Medium.
If you click on the link you get this message.
Under Investigation
The Medium article, Anonymous letter from UC Berkeley professor concerning BLM/recent events, was brilliantly written if you decide to click through and read it.
Excerpts
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites.
Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position.
The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.
No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders.
Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.
That is precisely the kind of thinking that nearly got Intercept writer Lee Fang fired.
The thought police at the Intercept forced Fang to apologize. His crime was telling the truth.
The Medium took a chicken-sh*t way out.
Synopsis
a friend of mine provided a two-sentence synopsis of the current state of affairs.
“The point of journalism and the point of educational institutions is to promote free and thoughtful inquiry.
But most Democrats will not speak out as they fear the wrath of the woke crowd just as Republicans fear the wrath of Trump.”
The result is one “clown”, as Taibbi describes Trump, vs two packs of cowards, one on the left, the other on the right with Trump egging both sides on.
If you say anything at all against Trump you automatically are accused of having TDS.
And heaven help you if you run a newspaper and say something like White Lives Matter or Buildings Matter, because if you do, you will soon be out of a job.
The middle is very fearful of the radical Left and the radical Right. This is a very dangerous slope we are on.
Welcome Back
We can use a lot more of writers who are willing to speak their minds.
But the risk of course is obvious, as a 6-month suspension shows.
You don’t have to like what he says, or how he says it, but please appreciate the fact that he can say it.
Mish
You shared really interesting blog on this website. Personally I like this blog and looking forward for more blogs.
Ida, link to assignmenthelpfolks.com
Mish:
Supreme Court rules workers can’t be fired for being gay or transgender
You see that? TODAY the SCOTUS ruled that employers can’t fire gay people just because they are gay. Not 160 years ago, not in 1955, not under even liberal administrations like Clinton or Obama, TODAY June 15, 2020.
Our society is slowly getting better even if it is three steps forward and 2.957 steps back, but I would ask African Americans why they think they have the market cornered in being hated and discriminated against, after all as bad as they have been treated it was never actually illegal to BE black, but there are still dozens of states that have laws on the books (now unenforceable) that make homosexuality (and how do you separate that from the person?) illegal, there are people in prison just for being gay.
Twitter’s ban was not in error, it was deliberate. Jack Dorsey makes no attempt to hide his platform’s political bias. They have verified and then de-verified a journalist after they posted a story that didn’t agree with the thought police. Meanwhile the NYT editor Sarah Jeong, with a history of racist tweets targeted at white men, continues happily employed and blue-checked.
Twitter is the worst thing to happen to this country. It has turned discourse into a meme-laden shouting match and it helped get Trump elected (he loves the platform).
Nobody has lost their job or got blow torched off the internet for criticizing Trump. It looks like your Trump bashing got you a “promotion” to The Street.
I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It
-Voltaire? François-Marie Arouet? S. G. Tallentyre? Evelyn Beatrice Hall? Ignazio Silone? Douglas Young? Norbert Guterman?
How come Zero Hedge banned me from their site for observing that a lot of right-wingers hang out there? Thought police anyone?
I got thrown off ZH long ago for harassing the idiots that post there. I never read the comments and I block their ads but I like the site as a news aggregator where I can find articles that don’t show up in the MSM.
Zerohedge is a conspiracy theorist site. PERIOD. It started out as a purely financial blog but strayed once the owner thought the government was after him in 2007 and moved the site overseas to an undisclosed location.
The problem with the internet is these sites have no sourcing and can say anything and people believe it. The internet is the undoing of mainstream media and government but its gone too far with tinfoil sites and the like. Someone could post an article saying the sun comes up in the west and the sky is not blue and people would believe it.
Are you confusing the comments section with the actual articles? Don’t click to see the comments, it’s not worth anyone’s time.
If not can you give some specific example of a ZH article that has proven to fit the definition of a “conspiracy theory”.
Wow Russ, we can actually agree on this!
ZH does sometimes link to the tinfoil hat brigade but the original content is overall high-grade.
I’m glad to hear others are reading ZH, I think they do a great job of bringing info to the people.
I’ve never seen any articles that I would consider “conspiracy theory” type stuff, the comments section is off the charts crazy though. Not worth 1 minute of time in my opinion..life’s too short.
It looks like theyve cleaned up their act a bit. When I use to go there in 2007-2008, they had writers who posted all kinds of crazy shit and references.
Wonderful. Criticizing a website based on what they posted to 12 years ago? Whew.
I think its been about 6 years since I had been there. They were posting bizarre stuff during the Obama administration. If I were to guess they got banned and then cleaned up their act to get back on twitter.
I stopped reading Zero Hedge after it became a site populated by Nazis and alt right. As far as I am concerned it should be eliminated – you have no right to yell fire in a movie theater and that’s pretty much all they do.
Black crime stats from Wiki:
Homicide
According to the US Department of Justice, African Americans accounted for 52.5% of all homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with Whites 45.3% and “Other” 2.2%. The offending rate for African Americans was almost eight times higher than Whites, and the victim rate six times higher.
Assault
The CDC keeps data on non-fatal injury emergency department visits and the race of victims.[70] While non-Hispanic white victims account for approximately half of total non-fatal assault injuries, most of which did not involve any weapon, black and Hispanic victims account for the vast majority of non-fatal firearm injuries.
Youth crime
The “National Youth Gang Survey Analysis” (2011) state that of gang members, 46% are Hispanic/Latino, 35% are black, 11.5% are white, and 7% are other races/ethnicities.[73]
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in the year 2008 black youths, who make up 16% of the youth population, accounted for 52% of juvenile violent crime arrests, including 58.5% of youth arrests for homicide and 67% for robbery.
Robbery
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey in 2002, robberies with white victims and black offenders were more than 12 times more common than vice versa.
A black WSJ commentator on the Sunday talk shows cited stats regarding the disproportionate percentage of 911 calls emanating from the black community.
So the police have more frequent interactions with black Americans, who commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes. It is not unlikely that the frequency of negative interactions with the police is directly related to the frequency of total interactions with the police.
Not politically correct. The truth does not matter.
Based on youth stats you would think Latinos would be getting more police assaulting them. But they arent.
Mish, I quit going to ZH years ago because of the tinfoil hat writers and Nazi Stormfront posters that wrote drivel so outlandish that the Enquirer would not publish it, and god forbid you question or disagree with anything as you will find out what the online equivalent of burning at the stake feels like.
Of course that does not mean I think ZH should be banned for strictly ideological posts, now had they broken actual laws that would be another thing, but as you point out our speech is being limited in ways that are far harder to fight than if the government just published a list of banned subjects. I think they have a right to their opinions and certainly the right to speak them, I just do not agree with most of them nor will support them in any way.
But, there is no doubt the wider public is being spoon-fed white guilt by the bucket. False and misleading narratives, for example up till very recently the movie Avatar was the top grossing film ever made and was just barely edged out of it’s top spot with a box office of $2,790,439,000 and how ANY adult with two sober brain cells could see that movie as anything but an attack on white males is just incredible. They do not even try to mask the message of the movie, I am only surprised they did not name the arch honky Colonel Christopher Columbus Rapemaster or some such.
Dances With Wolves same thing. White culture comes in killing and raping and stealing except for that one enlightened white guy that “understands” why the natives are the way they are. They give you a choice, be the bad ugly white man, or the sensitive rescuer lone hero that single handed saves those natives too unintelligent to save themselves. Really a pretty pathetic interpretation of how the world actually works. And aside from that is in itself a paternalistic insult to the “victims” of white men.
If we follow these memes to their absurd ends it would be a total isolation between cultures, the very antithesis of multicultural contact. And at the same time an accusation that there is NOTHING good about white males that would benefit any other culture. Personally I am tired of it. If people want to live in shit and deny their kids modern and healthy benefits of our culture so be it, scratch out a subsistence living in the heart of some undeveloped continent as best you can with malaria and dysentery. Just don’t come and accuse me of trying to harm you because of something your own masters did to you 400 years ago.
Avatar, one of the very few films I got up and walked out on, DWW, never even bothered going to that in the first place. Mostly because I do not have any desire to spend money to watch Costner apologize for my vile white male self. I have news for the world, I did not enslave Africans and I did not conquer the natives of the Americas. As far as I can tell those extreme backwards populations were in their current situations several centuries before I was born and I refuse to judge those that went forth and did what they did to native populations, I won’t judge 17th and 18th century minds by 21st century standards. I have enough on my plate without condemning myself for the lack of prescience of people who lived hundreds of years ago. I do not participate in white guilt and TFB if that makes me a bad person.
I just go to ZH for the articles, just like Playboy.
The comments there are a fever swamp.
The ZH comments section lost at least 50 IQ points over the last few years. I used to go there daily, now it’s only occasionally to skim the headlines.
Amazing how verbose you can be about things that you have failed to watch! Do you just manufacture the necessary bridges in your mind to fill in the parts that you never saw?
I will take your snide remark as a compliment, since like at ZH you are a hit and run artist that has the intellectual backing for what you say that is appropriate for a russian troll at times. If I manufacture bridges in my mind that is called thinking and it is superior to simply parroting what others say. Like some people (most people) I could mention.
AT BEST Avatar is a steaming pile of caca commercializing sentiment and getting morons to pony up $20 for a ticket popcorn and a coke. I saw enough of it to know that it was just a bad movie to start with.
It’s funny how some people think that the more words they write, the smarter they must be.
Let me helpfully interpose here that I slogged through the entire movie and came to the exact same conclusion. It is also suffused with the anti-capitalist mentality that informs so much of the bilge emanating from Hollywood. Every corporation is apparently run by minions of Satan and hell-bent on exploiting/killing noble savages while completely destroying the environment, as there is no other way to make profits. In Avatar the culprit is a mining company, which is especially bad. As an aside to this, back when “real socialism” was operative in the former Eastern Bloc and benevolent central planning agencies and politburos were running the show, these well-meaning comrades produced pollution and environmental damage on a scale never seen before or since. They poisoned entire regions with their chemical plants. No-one was ever held accountable.
Zerohedge is a bunch of hypocrites. I’ve been banned from posting on their site for around 10 years.
Me too. Reasonable thought and speech simply is not welcomed there.
That Medium letter was great! The following two paragraphs were particularly apropos. When will a statue celebrating the wonderful life of George Floyd be erected in Minneapolis or Houston?
“As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors.
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.”
It still seems obvious to me that anybody debating the merits of Floyd’s life is missing the point. It doesn’t matter if he was a total nutcase, our society has been ready to explode for a while and he happened to be the guy with the knee on his neck. If the protests weren’t for him, they would have been for someone else.
Every Trump fan can understand this point if they try. When I point out that Trump didn’t mean the MAGA rhetoric from 2016, I always get the same kinds of pushback that it’s the sentiment that counts, or that he got people thinking about new issues even if he didn’t deliver. Results don’t matter they tell me, because he showed the establishment that regular people still have a voice and besides, the message matters more than the person.
The fact that we’re a country that operates so strongly on emotion rather than logic probably explains a lot about why we are where we are. We’re perfectly happy to rally around scumbags if furthers our agendas, and bristle at anyone who points out inconsistencies or questions the purity of our momentary heroes.
It’s not missing the point. It would be missing the point if everybody stuck to the brutality issue, but they won’t. They insist on making George a hero, a martyr, a model for other black men, eulogizing him, giving him a national funeral and a gold casket.
And that’s the point the author is making too. All the valid points are buried under a bunch of fake narratives which are simply incorrect. And all the emotion that is roused, is roused on things that are not real, and will not result in any kind of discourse based on real things with possibly real solutions.
It is magical thinking eclipsing the powers of rational thought:
“Community-based system of public safety”
An don’t forget the almost $15 MILLION people have dumped into his GoFundMe account [ link to gofundme.com ](goes to his family, I believe) and of course, the “ghetto lottery” award his family will be getting from the city of Minneapolis, which will total in the millions of $$ also!
I bet his family is going to be thankful to George getting killed for all of their future history. Hopefully, they will use part of those windfalls to do something positive in their community and not just waste it on gambling and drugs.
But why should we hold George to these hero standards when we don’t apply them to Trump, Biden, or anyone else? Emotion over logic, it’s the American way.
Emotion over logic is the human way. We are primarily emotional animals that react to most things out of fear. It’s how every dictator has taken control.
Tengen, I would have used the word sentimentality instead of emotion since emotions can have a full range of human feeling and be both positive or negative, where sentimentality is generally kind of sickening wishful emotion that is not really helpful in any situation, and often (very possibly 2020) it is a poor chice to have to make between two scumbags, either one of which is capable of ending America through sheer stupidity, or having decided to ride a tiger they find they can’t hold on. But otherwise good points!
Thank you for bringing another facet to this story. It’s not politically correct to criticize George Floyd, but although I condemn the brutality of the police, and feel they should get maximum prison time, I hardly feel sorry that another antisocial
psychopath is gone from our society.
But but but Jojo, don’t you understand? All those bad things Mr. George was that you list for us are the fault, and responsibility of the vile white males that forced him into unemployment and drugs and criminal endeavors in order to survive because we did not allow him to get a decent education and job based strictly on the color of his skin. That is why there is not one single middle class African American with a degree or decent standards and values working at real jobs and providing for their families in spite of all those fake news commercials that show blacks sharing in the American consumer dream. And that black female urologist I go to is actually just a really DEEPLY tanned white lady with odd hair.
Cool, let’s ignore the legal structure of the justice system and delegate the power of judge, jury and executioner to the beat cop.
Jojo can be the one to decide who is innocent until proved guilty by those beat cops.
That is hyperbolic just a bit Mr. P. The problems we are seeing with cops, especially re black males, is not an abdication of the justice system, the system has its weaknesses and those must be corrected or the nation will burn, but it is not just black males, I have experienced police douche bags myself as a slight white male who could not really even have offered a threat to a female cop on her own. Policing itself has to be fundamentally changed, it was militarized in the Raygun administration has steadily gotten worse since. But, one of the real problems here is the PC censorship that does not allow anyone to stick up for cops or say why the police may behave differently around black males than others. We are not allowed to say that they have collectively a 33% rate of criminal records and incarceration. We are told that this is not a valid point because black males are systemically and structurally discriminated against forcing them into a life of crime in order to survive. And my reply to that is WHAT A FUCKING INSULT to those that did go to school and get an education and a job they have worked hard at and who did not abandon their families or turn to substance abuse.
I have known many black men that cannot get a job for the simple reason they cannot pass a drug test. I know others that can’t hold a job because simmering anger always eventually erupts having bought the myth of their African victimhood. No! We are not allowed to say these things and thus anger on the other side grows to the point where we see rioting on both sides.
The whole racial divide is going to take a long time to heal even as the wounds are re torn open every day in the media. But it must start with demilitarizing the police. Nothing else we can do is going to help till that step is taken, and I am not saying we need some airy-fairy non police authorities to take over from them, what I am saying is we need to stop the police culture where they think everyone that is not a cop is a criminal dirtbag. We have to end the hyper reactive cop think that tells them they have to be in tactical SWAT mode every time the approach a black person. Or any person.
Hi Herkie, again, my response was narrowly focused on the extraordinary power imbued in the street cop. The American justice system is founded on layering, where it takes several steps to exact justice — not summary judgment executed by one individual.
As presently constituted, that beat cop is getting away with personal justice. It has to stop. It is un-American.
Well, as we have been discussing the new SCOTUS ruling re gay people and employment discrimination there are systematic and institutionalized “layers” of discrimination by cops and governments and employers and landlords, and hospitals/doctors, and the best the right can come up with is their mistaken notion that it is not discrimination based on who a person is but on their behaviors, so for example black males all being “criminals” or all gay men engaging in sodomite sex….
In fact in some cases the description of behavior actually defines who a person is, in the case of gay people for example, the only difference between a straight guy and a gay guy is that one has sex with women and one is attracted to men for intimate relationships. The problem is that you cannot separate what a person is from what they do when it is a fundamental part of their personality. By outlawing what they do you outlaw who they are.
Cops do set themselves up as having to be that first layer in our legal/justice system when actual crimes are being committed or suspected of being committed, like with Floyd George, the man had a record which notified the police that he was a serial law breaker, and the contact that ended with George dead was initiated after police observed him breaking real laws. Disorderly conduct, or public intoxication or whatever it was. In that event they are by extention painting all black males with the same impulse inside them that they are all criminals and to be hyper reactive when around them. It is a wrong judgement that all black males are criminals, and that is evidenced by so many violations that are mere infractions, like speeding, or having a taillight out that end in death. THAT MUST BE STOPPED! But, you will be unlikely successful as long as half the population remain preejudiced and see no problem with discriminating against whole segments of the population like Trump’s signing order that revoked Obama’s signing order that dissallowed discrimination against gay and trans peole in healthcare. Don’t bother trying to defend that action, there is ZERO room in this nation to go out of your way to allow healthcare to discriminate against a chunk of the population that is about 5 times larger than the Jewish population.
And the difference between gays and Blacks for example is that it is actually illegal for anyone cop or otherwise to discriminate against blacks for ANY reason, where it is still mostly legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people for almost any reason by anyone. The only reason there was ever a gay movement to get our rights RECOGNIZED (not handed to us or created new, just enforce them as they already existed) was that police always loved to go to gay venues and extort money, or even bust the place up and arrest a few queens so their lives were ruined, it was a special type of cop fun that many cops volunteered for that duty, the way they went after the Stonewall in NYC and triggered a riot that the “queens” were not going to put up with anymore.
There is a long history of such abuse by cops and I agree it has to stop. If a cop witnesses a crime or behavior proscribed by law, public intoxication for example, then he is duty bound to arrest, if he cannot safely arrest on his or her own then they must have backup. That is basically what happened with Floyd George. The problem was the cop then went on to apply force so brutal that the man died even after there was no threat of him escaping justice, or harming anyone. This needs to be treated as first degree homocide as it is the ultimate violation of human rights, the right to LIFE! Every single death at the hands of a cop must be investigated as a POSSIBLE homocide. If justified then fine, no mark on their record other than it was a death justified by the level of force used.
I remember that many cities in California changed their policy of hot pursuit, too many people were dying in these chases. Both suspects and innocent bystanders. It wrankled that all a criminal had to do was flee at high speed in order to lose cops that were not now permitted to give chase. But it was becoming too expensive in collateral damage to do these chases. The week I moved to Oregon someone fled from the cops who gave chase and the suspect hit an innocent vehicle at over 115 mph killing a family. And sheering off a power pole, and wrecking the Saturn dealership, but the suspect actually survived and was not even guilty of a crime till he hit the gas and the cops started to give chase. Why he evaded a stop is not known.
“Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.”
― Jean Cocteau
Mish — still getting logged out.
Chrome, Windows 10.
Thanks
Me too!
A few days ago, a letter was posted to the web, purportedly written by one A. Cab who claimed to be a former police officer pushed into a repudiation of all police. His worldview aligned perfectly with Black Lives Matter. He called “all cops bastards.”
The letter was long, beautifully written, structured like a research paper, flowing with polysyllabic words and complex sentences. In short, it reeked of bullshit — it was published anonymously and you could tell within one paragraph that no cop would be capable of writing what resembled a doctoral thesis.
The letter linked to in this post, attributed to a Berkeley professor, reeks of the same bullshit. It too was published anonymously. It strains all credulity that any Berkeley professor’s worldview would align so perfectly with talking points from Fox News or Lew Rockwell.
Look, I am anti-censorship. The remedy for free speech is more free speech. I don’t think anyone should lose their job for their ideas. But once anyone opens their mouth, it is implicit that there will be rebuttals.
If you don’t think systemic racism is a thing, you simply haven’t read enough US history.
And what if Fox News and Rockwell happen to be right on this issue? That would apparently violate your echo chamber narrative Purple.
The viewpoints of Fox News and Lew Rockwell are undoubtedly correct in the minds of some people. It’s what’s known as opinion. If you believe their opinions to be correct, then I know everything about you I need to know. And likewise, I’m sure.
Your inability to imagine that a UC Berkeley professor could have a viewpoint that aligns with some of the views expressed by Fox News and Lew Rockwell is more a failure of your imagination than a logical argument. There are all types of people in the world, holding all types of viewpoints.
It does, however, seem like it would be hard for the author of the letter to remain anonymous. The number of black professors at Berkeley seems to be surprisingly small for such an ‘enlightened’ university. Look at the photos of the History Department faculty for example: link to history.berkeley.edu
From the photos it looks like there is a single black male in the entire department. The letter is extremely well written. It could be a black female (rather than a male), and could be someone from any department (the reference to STEM may indicate someone in the sciences), but even so I would think it would be possible for someone familiar with the university to narrow the author of such a letter down to a very small number of people. The multiple references to Nigerian blacks in a positive light may indicate someone with that background. The author is right, I think, that they would be quickly fired for the letter if discovered. That kind of diversity of thought is not tolerated at public universities, especially Berkeley.
Or it could be a fake from some right-wing intellectual as you suggest, but that seems unlikely to me. People on the right generally like to be compensated (with money or recognition) for something that would take that kind of effort. Certainly possible it is not real though.
Understood Quatloo. The anonymity of the author leaves enough questions to render the letter meaningless in that context. All one can say is whether one agrees with it or not, and so it is propaganda.
The statement that the person writing it was black might be a false flag. Most people in Academia have written extensively over the years. If someone truly wants to find this person, the way to do it would be to compare the words and writing style to other published writings.
I would wage that all the 3-letter agencies can do this rather quickly. I would expect that there is software available in general that could do the task, just as for instance, there is software to discover plagiarism, which my understanding is commonly used in colleges to prevent student copying.
Right now the United States is collectively the least racist it has ever been in it’s history. I would argue that the authorship of the letter does not matter as much as the content. You are assuming that this professor actually is in UC Berkely – he or she could have intended to intentionally misdirect and sow some discord at Berkely which is a symbol of just the kind of entitled radical left wing cultism that is sinking the county.
“Right now the United States is collectively the least racist it has ever been in it’s history.”
Argument from authority. Going to need some heavy-duty persuasion via data and study to believe that. Simply asserting that is meaningless.
Even if granted for argument’s sake, a vat of wine with a drop of piss in it is a vat of piss.
here is one measure. You tell me – how many data points it would take to change your belief system?
I could ask you the same. Or we could just agree to disagree.
Good point. The authorship is suspect, but not because a black man couldn’t have written it (which seems to be the point of some of the reactions). It is inconceivable that someone would not be immediately doxed, even if he never expressed an opinion on BLM or whatever, based on other points of view he expresses in his teaching and research. Of course it could be a black academic who has switched details. But there are other blacks expressing similar points.
Maybe Candace Owens wrote it. Or Schrodinger’s Cat.
Let me paraphrase the post by Mr. Purple.
“It is too well written to be real”
“I will attack it with Ad Hominem attacks”
“I will diligently not engage with any of the actual arguments made in the letter itself because they are so rational and damning to my position”
It’s, honestly hilarious to see someone write that and have so little self awareness. I mean the main argument “It is too good/well written to be real” lmao. How can someone type that without laughing at themselves.
Thank you for that well done attack on white males and the total dismissal of all real concerns about the ongoing racial divide Mr. Purple. It does just what it is intended to do, prevent real dialogue about something we have to get right soon or watch our civilization crumble.
Doesn’t apply to all white males, just a certain subset. Figured you didn’t belong to that subset Herkie, but maybe ask yourself why you got so peeved by it.
Why? Because in spite of the corruption of our society and economy I still belive there is no free lunch and the way to honor the suffering and injustice inflicted upon your ancestors is not by demanding cash payments hundreds of years later, even if the idea is appealing to some because it would allow them to say to blacks from then on STFU you were paid off so I no longer have to listen to your guilt tripping.
Because NO GOOD can come from paying off terrorists, or from a culture selling their birthrights for filthy money they know they do not deserve. That is not how you fix what is wrong, you fix it by being AMERICANS first and Africans second. By honesty and hard work and not allowing all that is wrong with this crony capitalist social disgrace stop you from being the best person you can be rather than a money grubbing parasite lusting afyter other people’s money no matter how they came by it.
Reparations would be the surrender of the last vestage of community and hope, it would end in war, but probably not till a dozen years of spiraling rancor brings the nation to the point of refighting the civil war all over again. Even if authoritarians find a way to hold the country together it will not be the same place nor a place any of us want to live in. And I will not.
That’s great Herkie. But no one is discussing reparations. That would be a strawman, though I am now very clear on where you stand on that issue.
What IS being discussed is equality under the law as codified by the 5th and 14th Amendments, among others.
Is it offensive to you that American citizens are demanding equality under the law? If so, why?
And why were you offended by the meme I posted? I didn’t name any names, and I wouldn’t have named yours.
What do you mean NO ONE IS DISCUSSING REPARATIONS? It has been in the news a LOT in the last few weeks. Including calls from black elected officials calling for specific amounts in the trillions to be paid to all black people regardless of their ancestors status as slaves, when you ask them about that they sort of hem and haw and reply that it is for reparations but also about the miscondoct of American society for other percieved slights and crimes like mass incarceration. Employment discrimination, and just generally lower compensation based on being black.
On June 19, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties is holding its first congressional hearing on reparations in more than a decade. It will include testimony from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, actor Danny Glover, and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), among others, and will “examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community, and the path to restorative justice.”
BET founder Robert Johnson calls for $14 trillion of reparations for slavery
No ONE? Where have you been? It is a driving factor in the anger that is erupting in violence and it is NEVER going to happen which will only drive more violence. It appears to me that the nation is headed either for a race war based on disappointed hopes of some African Americans re reparations or a second civil war based on the division among whites over white guilt verses a rational approach to race issues. I will not be here for it though, I think some nice Central American nation where you can grow coffee in your backyard and do not demand you quit using tobacco would be nice to ride it out as the country immolates itself.
C’mon Herkie. No one is taking that seriously. BLM will be lucky to move the needle one inch, let alone pie-in-the-sky bullshit like trillions in reparations.
It’s a standard negotiating tactic — ask for the moon and meet somewhere near the middle.
Look, technically, yes, some voices are calling for reparations. I even sympathize with them to a point. But I would advise ignoring the fringe elements and focusing on the mainstream players, the ones who are asking for equal justice under law, which already should be a given.
Make no mistake. While the national, cultural, social and racial dynamics are different, the OP ‘s ‘clever’ meme graphic has essentially exactly the same aim as the poster above from a different era.
I’m Jewish. You might want to reconsider just how posting that makes you look.
It doesn’t matter to me (nor should it to anyone else) whether you are Jewish or not – or is the fact that the comparison of the two graphics is in some way verboten simply because of that fact? I suppose it’s just like not ‘having permission’ to voice a critique of some aspects of observed Black American society because I am not myself Black. And how indeed does it make me look? You are implying, of course, that because I posted an image from the height of anti-semitism in Germany that I am myself a nazi of some sort? What a cheap way to debate. The point of juxtaposing these two images is to show their inherent similarity – namely the explicit demonization of a subset of society based on ethic/racial stereotypes. I would say that if anyone should compare and evaluate the thematic similarity of these two images it should be you.
Corvinus effectively pointed out that the “meme” you posted has stunning similarities to propaganda used in the past to commit horrible atrocities. Any idiot can tell he didn’t post it because he liked the message but rather because he was pointing out how dangerous yours is. Your “meme” shows no real argument but is one huge straw man argument meant to demonize an entire group of people.
It is, simply, evil. The stunning thing is some people on a certain side of politics are so delusional they think that they are “fighting” evil even as they uncritically deal in it. It is sad.
You Godwined the thread with really offensive Nazi propaganda. I didn’t even bother reading what you wrote. You can save yourself some effort in the future, I’ll be ignoring you permanently. Just letting you know, not expecting you to care.
Just as I will be ignoring you permanently.
The narrative has been that the police officer choked out the man’s life because he was black. What about the police officer who pushed the old man (not black) – he could have also died if he were unlucky?
The main issue lost in the process is police brutality. All these show how issues can be portrayed if one so desires.
You mean the old man who purposely walked over and put himself in harms way and instigated a defensive reaction from the police in riot gear, in a riot line, breaking up a riot? That’s not police brutality thats stupidity.
So we can agree that all lives don’t matter. Glad we settled that.
Apparently his own life didn’t matter to him.
Like a martyr perhaps. Gugino is active in the Catholic community. His choice either way.
A martyr ?? Holy sh!t. Your crazy dude. good night.
Good night Russ. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
Btw we’re talking about 1 arrogant entitled old idiot who thought he was above the consequences of his actions, probably a great example of “white privilege”, not “all lives” whatever thats supposed to mean these days.
You knew him well, I get it.
Bull shit. The old geezer was not a threat, and could have been dealt with in other ways. I have never pushed an old person over. I have hit women, but only after they hit me more than once. As a cop in riot gear with all your colleagues, you should be hyper aware of your conduct, and have little to fear in that situation. Police brutality is still brutality even if the victims are idious, crazy, deaf, uncooperative, whatever. Even violent people can usually be dealt with without harming them, unless they are competently violent.
You should join a law enforcement organization, show us all how its done. it pays pretty well and retire at 52 I think.
Lead by example!
The Federal Reserve is even firing people for negative comments on BLM. link to wsj.com
The more they fire, the better.
Why would a Fed employee criticize protestors? Do they not want any small time competition in the looting game?
Rioters would have to torch a million American buildings before we could even begin to ask if they’re doing as much damage as the Fed. Plumes of smoke would have to be visible from just about any location in the country!
There’s a lot of flat out bs out there that is being swallowed hook, line and sinker for some reason.. its a weird time. Nobody’s thinking things through. Someone screams racist, nazi or discrimination and they come running, like a dog whistle! No questions asked just ready to attack…and they do.
Polarization is marching toward a second US (un)civil war.
Equality in the hands of man implies discerning differences, and judging them.
When an individual makes a free choice of association or disassociation, he is upholding that freedom for any other person to take, no matter their colour or race.
The unkindness of another does not make a person more right.
It is naive to expect others to behave in any particular way towards you, and even more so to try to make them, but there are clear limits common to all that no person should pass.
Not a civil war. At most civil unrest and slow dissipation of civil society to make way for an increasingly authoritarian version. Americans are too stupid to challenge the corporatist imperial elite that runs the system through secret police, corruption, and MSM narratives.
Lee Fang did not say, “ I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?… Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of… It’s stuff just like that that I just want in the mix.”
That was the comment of an African-American man named Maximum Fr quoted in Fang’s article.